Google Reader getting swallowed into the Google+ borg

I’ll confess: I kind of love Google Reader. In the same way I love my old vinyl records. The news feed program from Google is useful but hasn’t been redesigned in many years and it’s a mess of panels and text and everything jumps around and looks horrible. That’s part of the charm for me but few others. Google is going to finally address that by folding in a lot of Google+ functionality.

From CNET:

So say goodbye to friending, following, and shared link blogs inside of Google Reader. Instead, Reader will be receiving social features courtesy of Google+. However, Google will allow users to export old data, consisting of subscriptions, shared items, friends, likes, and starred items. Google also promises that the “end result is better than what’s available today,” which can’t be that hard to achieve.